I used to edit Innovation Management. My book, "The Elastic Enterprise", co-authored with Nick Vitalari and described as a must read for companies that want to succeed in the new era of business - looks at how stellar companies have gone beyond innovation to a new form of wealth creation. I speak on new innovation paradigms.
I started my writing career in broadcasting and then got involved in the EU's attempt to create an ARPA-type unit, where I managed downstream satellite application pilots, at just the time commercial satellite services entered the market. I also wrote policy, pre the Web, on broadband applications, 3G (before it was invented), and Wired Cities.
I have written for many major outlets like the Wall St Journal, Times, HBR, and GigaOm, as well as producing TV for the BBC, Channel 4 and RTE. I am a research fellow at the Center For Digital Transformation at UC Irvine, where I am also an advisory board member, advisory board member at Crowdsourcing.org and Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research.
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The One Innovation Rule That Matters Most

While I was editing innovation management, I got to see just about the whole range of opinions on what made for good innovation. The problem was, those opinions kept coming round and round. I mean the same ones with only small variation.

The techniques, the motivation workshops, the imploring of people to be more innovative. But there didn’t seem to be much consensus in these techniques, consensus on what really makes innovation work. I used to ask myself could we all, ever, agree – what are the essential ingredients of effective innovation – or were we just going to keep passing around opinions?

Scott Anthony at Innosight believes there is such an ingredient – more of that below.

In fact there seems to be a paradox at the heart of innovation because while a lot of companies ran up a flag saying “we are innovators”, those same companies often allocated pitiful resources to their innovation departments. I believe that is changing but it is still a big problem executives pay lip service to innovation.

I remember talking to one company with a huge public commitment to innovation whose innovation department was staffed by two people – whose innovation duties were in fact only part-time.

Innosight is the innovation advisory firm founded by Clayton Christensen, and Scott Anthony, managing partner, yesterday told me that he thought there really was one real essence of innovation, the factor that you can’t do without.

“We know enough about innovation to know how it should be done,” says Scott, over Skype. “So if it isn’t being done properly there’s only one explanation for that.”

And the explanation is leadership. Now on the face of it that might sound trite or banal. But the fact is, in many companies, leaders do not commit to innovation. They let a willing executive set up an innovation department and they OK a culture change program and they starve both of resources. So the very think many companies need tends to be the one they avoid.

And innovative companies need leadership that not only commits the resources.

“What allows companies to be great or mediocre is the leadership and the willingness to be misunderstood, for years if necessary. I haven’t seen a great innovation that doesn’t have leaders who are committed” says Scott and to underline his point he adds: “Any company that thinks it has an innovation problem in fact has a leadership problem.”

Proctor and Gamble under AG Laffley grew an open innovation department that P&G staffed with 30 people, based around the world, and committed to the various tools needed to seek out experts, innovators and networks wherever they might be.

So is there a way to summarize what leaders need to bring to innovation?

#1. Resources and commitment. The P&G example, in my experience, is unique in the extent to which they commit resources to open innovation, the process that changed their innovation culture. The CEO, Laffley embodied the spirit of innovation too, making it an imperative for his senior team. I guess what Scott is also saying is that any excuses around innovation should just not cut it. We know how to do innovation and if internal talent wont do it – hire in. There are no excuses.

#2. Being prepared to be misunderstood. As Scott says, good innovation leaders are prepared to be misunderstood while the market catches up with them. They take the long view and stand up for it.

#3. Humility and avoiding the favorite baby syndrome. I also hear from innovation folks how often a senior executive can screw up their world by having a favorite project, one that gets the resources and fattens up its staffers. Some humility from leaders, to let the internal crowd have its say is important. Time and again people inside organizations tell me thy know what is wrong but have no way to convince senior leaders how to fix a problem.

#4. Living with more chaos. This one I’ve heard from leaders themselves. the most difficult part of innovation for them is often knowing that their people are on a problematic course but knowing also they need to find this out for themselves. The new buzzword is “setting the guide rails”, so as long as their people are inside the rails there are times, even difficult times, when leaders need to stand back.

#5. Lean. In fact I also believe these qualities are perhaps becoming outdated. Lean innovation is a way round the challenge of getting leaders to take innovation seriously, so it’s not quite a quality of leadership but in time a commitment to lean processes might be.

I’d be interested to hear your views on this. What are the main characteristics of innovation leadership?

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It sounds like many businesses are spending more time and effort looking for a recipe for innovation with the sole purpose of achieving “success” and deriving financial benefit. Innovation and invention cannot be mandated by the board or achieved by following five, twelve or one hundred steps in a list developed by a think tank of specialists in a prestigious business school.

Innovation happens in the middle of the night, in the middle of a shower, while stuck in traffic, not in a sterile lab surrounded by the latest and most expensive technology.

We tend to hire specialists who know “a lot about very few things but very little about a lot of things”, whose names precede titles such as PhD, MBA and whatever other title is in favor this month, put them in an office, give them staff and expect them to “innovate”.

In our quest for a magic recipe for success we tend to neglect those who know “a little about a lot of things”, who are aware of it and know where to find people who know “a lot about a few things”. Why? Because their resumés don’t scream flashy, in vogue titles and their “career path” looks like the disjointed meanderings of a lost soul to a “trained professional” recruiter.

To me the polymath, the Renaissance Man, represents the essence of the fertile mind in which innovation and invention take root. Invention is often seen as a technical, strictly engineering endeavor. How can one invent something for humanity when one has little knowledge of the humanity he is inventing for.

Successful innovation requires a knowledge of and understanding of oneself, first and foremost, humanity, art, philosophy, physics, chemistry, sales, business and any other bit of knowledge on can pick up along the way. I’m not talking about degrees in each field, but enough knowledge to have an appreciation for the impact they have on humanity and be able to realize how they interact with each other.

We need people who are interested in experiencing LIFE yet, in the hiring process we tend to favor those who receive a concentrated, canned and certified education from some prestigious institution. Simply consider how HR departments in large corporations treat resumés from candidates whose “career path” was interrupted by an urge to backpack around the world for a year. More than likely, that hunger for life will get them rejected outright.

So, there is no magic, canned bullet to innovation. Innovation simply requires being alive, interested, observant and confident.

Ref: My orevious comment “[i]It sounds like many businesses are spending more time and effort looking for a recipe for innovation with the sole purpose of achieving “success” and deriving financial benefit.[/i]”

In my view The One innovation that matters most is we have to return to One who is GOD and hence i advise the all Forbes Riches that in the process of their Life Cycle we have to make a system that maintains the world means all should have to Reserve , Dedicate & submit 1% of Pure Real Natural Resources and 1% of Money to GOD and then we all should work for the Charity Philanthropy GOD Centered with GOD Conscious with One Common Account of GOD and Share and do charities in the Name of GOD and construct Temples/Churches/Mosques for the respective Religious population Community across the world along with constructing Schools/Colleges/Hospitals/Roads such Public works in the name of GOD Who is CMD Means Creator , Maintainer , Destroyer what we call as Chairman Managing Director to His will of Judgement and Justice Oblige and then there will be attainment of Peace and Happiness like Ocean when all Rivers flow towards Ocean – Shyam Panduranga

I believe when, strong and moral “leaders do not commit”, it’s not only innovation that suffers, but productivity, progress… so much of what is good in the world would never happen. It takes leadership to stand up for what’s right, even if it’s not easy. It take honorable and moral leadership to protect the weak, the disabled, the elderly. Without leadership, the world would be nothing more than an uncivilized jungle. The world would be a much better place with more leadership, but it is the leadership we have now that gives us the world we live in. If you want to see the world a better place, then it is entirely up to each one of us to lead whoever we are able to inspire to be better and to do more.

I think we can become obsessed with the term innovation, and creating innovation for the sake of it.

I’ve watched music go from radio, through vinyl, video, cassettes, cd, and now to downloads. Through it all this dinosaur still prefers vinyl because the overall package was more engaging and more fun.

My point is that the key to a great business success should be about the end users experience, not about “innovation” … the reason Apple is so successful is that they truly understood that the quality of the end users experience matters most and it always was top of their agenda.

Not for the sake of it necessarily – for the sake of competitive positioning. And sure, one way to do that is to slow down and go back to vinyl, or chrome bumpers etc. The way I see innovation is that we have a much more variegated market and that represents the breadth of customer requirements and wants – not just Apple’s end of them.

Organizations that are world-class innovators all display three things:

1) an internally consistent definition of innovation 2) demonstrated commitment to innovation, at a minimum in the forms of human and financial resources, and, 3) the use of best practices in innovation.

All of these are the result of decisions made by the leaders of the organization. So, Scott is right. When an organization doesn’t encounter success in innovation, it is due ultimately to a failure of leadership.

Your five points show leaders what it may cost them to take a stand and follow through. AG Laffley is one leader who made the tough choices, stayed the course, and reaped the rewards of world-class innovation. Not many corporate leaders have had the vision and/or courage to do likewise.

It’s not that the type of leadership is wrong, or too much or too little, or the right or wrong leadership decisions, it is that leadership as a useful concept is wrong. Leadership and innovation are opposing systems, neither is necessary or sufficient to sustain the other.